Ballot access laws too stringent

March 8, 2010

Alabama is one of the nation's least hospitable states for independent political candidates. Our ballot access laws serve to solidify the political grip of the Democratic and Republican parties by making it unduly difficult for anyone who wants to seek office without running under a party banner to get on the general election ballot.

The major political parties benefit from that, obviously, but the state's political climate does not. By effectively shutting down other options for voters, Alabama's laws allow little room for other political voices to be heard, and for voters to consider those other voices.

There have to be some limits on ballot access, of course, for purely practical reasons. If anyone who took a notion to seek office could get on the ballot without demonstrating some degree of support, the November general election ballots would be cluttered with far-fringe candidates and people running as a joke or to inflate their own egos.

But that does not mean that the bar should be set absurdly high, either. The intent should not be to eliminate independent candidacies, but to set a fair and reasonable standard for these candidacies to meet.

Currently, the law requires an independent candidate for statewide office to gather petition signatures from qualified electors totaling at least 3 percent of the number of voters who cast ballots for governor in the most recent general election. In November 2006, that number was 1,250,401. Three percent of that would be 37,512.

In reality, the number of petition signatures a candidate would have to gather would be significantly greater, as it is likely that not every signature would be that of a qualified elector. That's a high hurdle to have to scale.

Legislation by Rep. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, would create a more reasonable standard by cutting the requirement to 1.5 percent. Using the November 2006 figures again, this would mean an independent candidate would have to have 18,756 signatures.

That is still a sizable number, but it is not excessive. It is high enough to prevent some coffeeshop crank with no real support from getting a spot on the ballot, but not so high that a serious independent candidate with some support and organization could not realistically hope to reach it.

That standard would be sufficient to serve fairly both the interest of Alabamians in not having a hopelessly cluttered ballot and their interest in having a political arena not inescapably dominated by the two major parties.